Why are states having so much trouble finding a humane way of administering the death penalty?

In terms of continuing to do it by lethal injection the problem is that the chemicals they used to use are not being produced much any more because the countries that produced them have outlawed capital punishment. In terms of using another method, I think more showy deaths are seen as cruel and unusual punishment. But we do manage to euthanize our companion animals humanely.

I looked at your question and thought wtf? Humane way to kill? But I see what you mean in the details. Yes, I agree. Let’s OD them on smack or something like that. I’m sure there’s enough in police stores.

I think it is bureaucratic incompetence. No one wants to take responsibility.

I suppose cost would have a big factor in it, I am torn with the Capital punishment thing while I do not support it, on the other hand certain monsters should be put down.

@flutherother You hit it right on. No one wants to say I’m going to kill this vermin. But some vermin needs killing. It just takes balls to be willing to say it and do it.

Because we like our executions to be neat and sanitized. The best, most humane methods would be firing squad or guillotine, but those are kinda messy and we don’t like that. The methods we have to kill someone without blood aren’t all that humane as it turns out.

@janbb

Oh the drugs in question are still being produced, just for legit medical purposes only. Their manufacturers have forbidden their use in executions.

I don’t think that there is any humane way to kill people.

Why does the way have to be humane?

To qualify for capital punishment, you have to have committed first degree murder, judged guilty by jury, have a judge approve the sentence, and go through various levels of appeals. But the underlying act – the killing of another – clearly took away that victim’s life, usually planned and in a violent way.

So why are we concerned with how much pain the murderer feels? I’m not. Let the bastards suffer. I’m all for firing squads and hangings, televised. Drug mixtures us a cop-out. Why should murders be treated better than their victims?

Maybe the best approach is to do capital punishment in a way that mirrors the original crime. If you stab someone to death, then your death penalty is by stabbing.

@elbanditoroso

And if the murderer killed their victim by slowly skinning the victim alive then the same should be done to the killer, right?

@elbanditoroso: “Why should murders be treated better than their victims?”

“Maybe the best approach is to do capital punishment in a way that mirrors the original crime. If you stab someone to death, then your death penalty is by stabbing.”

Do you really believe that? If someone kidnaps a kid, rapes her for 2 months, and then kills her, should we do the same to him? If we only raped him for 1 month, would that concern you?

@Darth_Algar – that works for me. The principle is the important thing. You do the crime, you suffer.

No way a fallible and corruptible institution like the political state should be given the opportunity to make an irreversible fuck up.
Tell me any elected judge elected prosecutor, elected anything that you would trust to be universally and consistently objective when it came to sentencing a soul to death.
Are you kidding me?
We voluntarily give these morons a whole lot of power. But there has to be a limit to the power that they have.

@hominid – I’m not going to quibble about details – one month, two whatever.

The point, to me, is that the killer should get to experience some of what the victim did, not some sanitized version. The finer points – how much, how long – those are details.

By the way, other capital offenses are kidnapping and treason.

@elbanditoroso

Now consider this: would you really want someone who has it in them to do that to another person, legal sanctioned or not, walking around as your neighbor? Is that really the standard you want for the society you live in?

@elbanditoroso – Interesting. So, you’re not opposed to suffering or immorality per se – you’d just rather the state be the only one to do it? I don’t want to pull a “2 wrongs don’t make a right” cliche…but…ok, I have to ask:

What good comes from raping and killing this guy (and having a state that does this)? Be specific.

I am not finished here. These douche bags think that since you elected them, they are godlike. But they are not. They are merely ambitious.
And yet, they have the power to take guilty a verdict (legitimate) and decide you should be killed for it (their whim, depending on how the voting mob is feeling these days).
Total bullshit.
They are generally people who could not figure out a way to make a living in a real economy, so they figured out a way to get paid for looking competent. And you trust them.
Shame on them and shame on you.

@Darth_Algar – good questions both.

A couple of points.
1) I have ethically challenged neighbors already, I’m sure. Bankers, executives, drug dealers, and so on.

One neighbor works for the DEA. Another neighbor down the street works for a bank and was in charge of foreclosures. So there are already lots of people who have jobs that I don’t see as particularly honorable.

When I meet a neighbor, I hope that they are a good neighbor and a good citizen. I’m not really concerned about what they do all day.

2) Standard for society: We live in a society that already does not respect human life and autonomy. (laws that impoverish and starve people, laws that force people to live on the street, government that eavesdrops on its citizens, government that tries to deny help for its neediest citizens). So society is pretty damned immoral already. Society voted for the people who created these standards.

@hominid -

What good comes of it?

Two pragmatic and one emotional reason:

1) the killer is no longer wasting my tax money in prison and one bad person no longer breathes.

2) society (as a whole) sees that there are consequences for hurting others. Right now there is a disconnect between the crime and the punishment, One is messy and the other ‘clean’. Showing society that there is a real, and painful consequence for murdering someone has an educational and perhaps deterrent effect.

3) Emotional – the victims families (and perhaps society) get to feel closure and some measure if revenge (and perhaps justice)

@elbanditoroso

Being a banker with questionable scruples is a far sight different from being someone with the capacity to kill another person in some of the most horrific ways possible, don’t you think?

~ Ship them to the first Mars colonies. Like what Britain did to Australia. ~

@elbanditoroso

1: The death penalty costs more than life imprisonment does. Granted this is largely due to the initial trial (capital punishment trials tend to be extremely expensive these days, given the reliance on experts, DNA evidence, forensics testing, etc) and the, necessary (in my view) appeals process.

2: Capital punishment, no matter how brutally employed, has never been shown to be a deterrent.

3: Most victims family’s report feeling no closure at the execution of their loved one’s killer.

@elbanditoroso

#1 – This doesn’t count, because we’re not discussing death penalty vs not death penalty. You and I are discussing your proposal that criminals have done to them what they did to their victim(s). This isn’t relevant in any way.

#2 – This is the deterrence argument. Do you really believe that deterrence works or would work if we only reinstated the rack an other torture devices? Do you have any evidence or is it just a gut feeling? But more importantly, are you saying that people will only keep from committing horrible crimes because they don’t want to face a state that would do the same? Is this a religious thing? Is there how you view ethics? Carrot/stick? How come violent crime rates are decreasing along side execution rates?

#3 – I’m not sure what to say here. Your really think that we all benefit by increasing brutality? If someone I loved was kidnapped, raped, and killed, I would want to find the person, keep them in my basement, and go at them with power tools for the next 50 years. We have a state to protect people from me – and me from me. There is no such thing as closure, but there is such a thing as me destroying me by committing violence. What kind of mad max sociopath dystopian society are we talking about here? And why are you advocating for it?

Some of this comes down to math.

violence + violence = 2x violence

If we care above violence, we care about reducing it. I’m not sure if it gets any simpler than that.

I don’t think it should be humane at all. I think it should fit the crime and when it cannot, the state should do its worse. The torture and execution is about retribution and catharsis, not deterrence. Monetary costs are a non-issue once you see it from this perspective.

Really? We lower ourselves down to the level of the scum and we’re still okay with ourselves.

There is no we here. You see it as lowering, I do not. That is why I’m okay with myself, and you’re troubled by such measures.

Okay, we’re all allowed our own opinions. You want to go there, I don’t. That’s why fluther is interesting.

Too much political correctness! A firing squad would suffice very well, with the rifles being fired automatically, with one bullet to the head a split second before any other bullet(s) was/were fired through the heart.

I think @talljasperman needs to remove the tildes from his comment because it is fucking brilliant. i wish i would have thought of it

It’s not a joke. It is a win/win. The innocents that invariably fall through the corrupt government cracks and get sent along aren’t dead. They still have a chance and might just be the stabilizing force within the dynamic that makes everything click.

for the record the comment is just a few posts above and reads, ”~ Ship them to the first Mars colonies. Like what Britain did to Australia. ~”

Because we now keep executions entirely too private.
When they had entertainment value and were cathartic, they turned a good profit.
Maybe we should go the Roman route and just pit 2 death-row inmates against each other, televised? ~

@ibstubro Because we can see that sort of bloodsport for free. I mean, you ought to see how hostile some people act when they’re told they have to pay for stuff before they walk out of the store, or that they’re not allowed to take up two parking spaces just because their BMW cost more than you did. If you can see ordinary people try and shiv each other for stupid shit, why pay to see a couple of professional killers have a pay-per-view knife fight?

Because in the effort to appear humane and moral, they can’t use logic to conduct the immoral act.

Because ever since Jesus Christ, God hasn’t said “An eye for an eye’, which means;
death penalty’s are man created.

The same day there was an article in our local paper about Texas needing to come up a different method because they were having difficulty getting lethal drugs there was another article about a vet killing a feral cat with an arrow through the head and I thought, Hmmmm. I wonder…...........

@rojo And Texas being Texas, that cat wasn’t feral; it was one that was owned by someone and being babysat.

Yes, they shot a household pet and lied about it!

Of course, she got fired for that too (despite her claims that, “They can’t fire me, I’m awesome!”), and may not be practicing veterinary medicine much longer.

So tell me again how a story about an unjust killing by an ex-medical practitioner from a trigger-happy state followed by a feeble cover-up is relevant to a discussion about humane executions? Seems like an argument against any sort of death penalty at all.

Why does death need to be humane?

^ So the people doing it can see themselves as “better” then the immoral scum they are killing.